Another massacre, but reform remains unlikely

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That Elliot Rodger was allowed to keep his guns will haunt his victims’ families. His online footprint indicated mental illness. He had threatened violence. He was living in a facility for “adults with disabilities”. His mother had tipped off police.

Yet the authorities did not discover his acquisition of three handguns. The officers who visited him last month found him “articulate, polite and timid”. His family say that the police did not find a history of guns at the time, but the same police have now said he acquired his firearms legally.